Marmite’s playful strapline has had longevity, with the phrase used to refer to a topic that polarises opinions.
Photograph: Nick Potts/PA Archive/Press Association Images

The best brand straplines become part of our everyday vernacular. They can evoke strong feelings of nostalgia for happy days gone by, and even change behaviours – and thereby increase sales. Isn’t that what marketing is all about?

That said, coming up with a good one is not easy. We have tried to unpick the secrets of success behind some of the most loved or long-standing ones:

Tesco: ‘Every little helps’

Fortunately for them, perhaps, the biggest brands can delegate the business of coming up with a catchy strapline to their creative advertising agency.

Marc Cave, founding partner at Green Cave People, was closely involved in the creation of Tesco’s longstanding strapline, “Every little helps”, which first went live back in 1993 when he was working at agency Lowe Howard-Spink.

“Our brief was to try to make the middle ground the high ground, to offer the best all-round shopping deal.” Cave and his team had spent months coming up with ideas. However, the strapline itself was born quite spontaneously when he and a colleague were chatting about the project over lunch. “Every little helps became one of the longest running, formally used advertising lines,” he says.

John Lewis: ‘Never knowingly undersold’

The history of John Lewis’ well-known strapline goes back decades. “Never knowingly undersold has been our trading philosophy since 1925,” says Jack Gorman, who works in the corporate and brand team at the British retailer. “The slogan was initially adopted by our founder John Spedan Lewis in 1925 at Peter Jones.” Gorman says it was originally intended to help remind buyers to get the lowest price. “It soon became famous for reassuring customers that they would never find the same product on sale more cheaply elsewhere.”

The department store has built an enviable reputation for customer service and reliability and, for this reason, its strapline still works. Max du Bois, executive director at agency Spencer du Bois, goes even further, describing it as “the high priest of retail straplines”. He adds: “It says it’s not cheap but it’s the best value. It says, ‘we do this as part of our DNA, year in, year out’.”

Neil Christie, managing director of agency Wieden & Kennedy, in London, adds: “It’s a brand that’s a bit old-fashioned and, for them, it still fits. Though if you were introduce it in a focus group now, people might ask you what it meant.”

L’Oréal: ‘Because you’re worth it’

L’Oréal’s advertising slogan is another that has become a well-known phrase – and one that is used to justify any retail overindulgence.

The slogan was created in 1973 by Ilon Specht, a 23-year-old copywriter at McCaan Erikson. In an article for The New Yorker journalist Malcolm Gladwell wrote that Specht was “rebellious, unconventional, and independent”. Specht revealed that the creative team working on the ad thought it should feature “a woman sitting by a window, and the wind blowing through the curtains... The woman was a complete object.” However she wanted to convey the sense that a woman choosing to look good was not just about pleasing men.

It ended with the signature phrase: Because I’m worth it.

John Illsley, director at brand valuation agency Intangible Business, which has carried out work for L’Oréal, says the phrase is about saying, “Treat yourself. This is a great product.”

“A good slogan becomes a composite part of a brand and genuinely creates value,” he adds. “If I think back to when I was a kid some still resonate even now, like ‘A Mars a day helps you work, rest and play’. It becomes almost indoctrinated.”

L’Oréal’s strapline can also help it to justify a luxury premium, which is key for many brands in the beauty industry.

Nike: ‘Just do it’

Christie says that one of the slogans Wieden & Kennedy came up with was Nike’s “Just do it”, which the brand has been using for more than 25 years. Originally coined in 1988 by the agency’s founder Dan Wieden, the inspiration came from an unlikely source – the killer Gary Gilmore who, when on death row, was asked what his last words were to be, and responded, “Let’s do it!”

“One of the strengths of a slogan that catches on is that it’s true to the brand but also goes beyond the brand,” explains Christie. “A big, global corporation is often looking for something like that – something more than just a descriptor.

“Just do it is a philosophy, a universal human emotion or truth. It’s about an attitude. It’s saying that everybody has the potential to be an athlete.”

Marmite: ‘Love it or hate it’

It’s important, however, not to make highfalutin claims that cannot be backed up, nor to come up with a brand strapline that risks making your brand the object of ridicule by taking itself terribly seriously.

A dose of humour can work wonders here, as in the case of Marmite’s marketing. The brand’s “Love it or hate it” strapline is used to good effect in promotional campaigns while Marmite brand manager Joanne Ó Riada says that the brand’s strapline “is born out of the fact that it polarises reactions” – something which it also leverages effectively in its active social media presence.

The slogan arose 19 years ago through a difference of opinion among the creative team at advertising agency DDB London (now adam&eveDDB) – one was a fan of the spread and one hated it. The resulting strapline encouraged Marmite’s sales to pick up after five years of stagnation, with the brand growing by around 5% a year in the following five years.